Strawberry crate project

Hello, Darnell here, Today after visiting the Karl Linn Community garden, I moved on to steps 4 & 5 of my Strawberry crate project.
4.  I lined each crate with plastic which were previously filled with soil and compost bought from Home Depot.
5. Filled each crate with good soil. I bought 8 bags of the veggie mix from American Soil & Stone. Well, I'm pooped, I will finish step 5 tomorrow, transplanting strawberries then adding mulch.

Playndirt visits Karl Linn Community garden

Hey all Dana here,

Today we visited Karl Linn Community Garden in Berkeley.  It was awesome. We met Mary, she was in charge of the gardening today.  There were student's from UC Berkeley volunteering at the garden.  Mary allowed us to look around to see what kind of plants they have.  I recognized some like tomatoes, kale or purple collards, a different variety of string bean and artichoke which was too cool. The kale by the way was really big, I can't wait until ours get that big. Anyway Darnell took pictures. I noticed that there was a lot of tomatoes that had fallen off the bush and it looked like they were decomposing which is cool because they will turn into compost which adds nutrients back to the soil.  I was allowed by one of the long time plot owners to pick some of her kale, so I did, I washed it off and stuck it in my freezer.
Until next time.

Karl Linn Community Garden
at the corner of Peralta Ave and Hopkins Street
in Berkeley, California.

Figs from friendly neighbors!

There's always free fruits & vegetables from fellow class mates - Merritt College

Strawberry crate project

Hi all, we've had great success with our strawberries this season. But some of them were damaged because of hanging over the edge of my pots, the stems would get kinked by the rim of the pots. It would be much easier to grow my strawberries in the ground, but I have no soil at our apartment. Also, my strawberries have runners with no where to go.

For months now I've been pondering how to grow my strawberries like I've seen done on a farm: on a mound, runners are weaving together, straw covering the soil so strawberries can rest on top. I thought about square shaped wooden crates lined up in a row, knowing me I'm not going to just go out and spend money without seeing if I can get a discount or free. Unfortunately, the Orchard Hardware Store (OSH) in our area is in the process of closing, they had wooden crates discounted for $15 each, I decided to wait to see if I could get them cheaper.  I was able to purchase them for $10 each, but I had to buy 10, that was perfectly fine since they had a base with wheels. (See pics)

Step 1. Purchase wooden crates, these wooden crates are screwed together and mounted on wheels.

Step 2. Dismantle to 10 individual wooden crates.

Step 3. Now I've screwed wooden crates back together but one level, 6 in a row.

This is all I've done so far, the next steps are:

Step 4. Line crates with a food grade plastic to preserve wood crates.

Step 5. Add soil and transplant strawberries, top soil with straw.

Step 6. Select a hot location, easy to do since it has wheels.

This morning our harvest smiled at us!

Kale, Strawberries, Sun gold tomatoes, Lettuce & Bush beans.

Produce gleaned over the past 7 months from our garden.